<p>Okay...I know they are different, but could you comment on the academics...please.</p>
<p>Columbia wins hands down. Academically, they look similar but Cal is such a huge university that it detracts from the classroom experience. Not only are class sizes much bigger at Cal, but courses are offered less frequently and more often oversubscribed that a very large percentage of Cal students need 5 or 6 years to graduate.</p>
<p>This applies for both CC and SEAS. Cal should serve only as a back-up to Columbia in the college admissions game for most students with all other considerations (financial, especially) being the same.</p>
<p>when it comes to undergraduate education, Columbia is easily better. </p>
<p>Cal’s only clear advantage would be in engineering. the difference is, at Columbia you can still get a great engineering education and not have 500 people in all of your classes.</p>
<p>by Cal do you mean Cal Tech? or just universities in general in California?</p>
<p>cal = Berkeley. The students at Columbia engineering are more competitive that those at Berkeley engineering. Columbia overall SAT scores are better than MIT’s and Columbia SEAS SAT scores are better than the Columbia average. Berkeley is a more renowned engineering school and is probably more pure than Columbia + probably has better job opportunities in something like electrical engineering.</p>
<p>I chose Columbia over the two.</p>